You shouldn't blame all Muslims for honour killings ­ but you shouldn't blame all men, either

Canadians have been debating the topic of “honour killings” ever since the arrest last month by Kingston police of an Afghan man, his wife and son, charged with murdering four female family members. Two explanations for the phenomenon have predominated from the beginning.

One explanation is defensive. It originates in the need of local Muslims to distance their community from honour killings, because most Canadians, including most immigrants from Islamic countries, classify these killings as murders — and with good reason. In a recent op-ed piece for the Montreal Gazette, Dolores Chew and Farha Najah Hussain of the South Asian Women’s Community Centre worry that this event will trigger a Canadian backlash against immigrants from some parts of the world. “If a white man kills his partner and/or children, he is seen as a murderer and a ‘bad apple.’ But when non-whites and non-Christians kill, the crime is often called an ‘honour killing,’ and entire communities and cultures are labelled as ‘backward.’”

That happens sometimes, to be sure, but not always. Apart from anything else, many Canadians would be embarrassed to expose their own prejudices — and even that is better than trying to legitimate their prejudices.

Muslims point out, moreover, that the Quran itself says nothing about honour killings. What they are usually reluctant to point out, however, is that some of the societies that adopted Islam were (and still are) tribal societies with long martial traditions — societies, in other words, that have always relied heavily on the closely related notions of honour and shame, which apply in different ways to both women and men. Not all tribal societies (or societies with tribal remnants) are Islamic, at any rate, and not all Islamic societies are tribal. This controversy is not about Islam, therefore, but about tribalism. And if that implies a critique of Afghan or other tribal societies, then so be it. Immigrants come here from around the world precisely to avoid tribalism, and Canadians should respect them for doing so.

Finally, this defensive explanation raises some additional questions. Are women the only victims of tribal societies? Although most experts admit that a few families in these societies kill sons or brothers who get out of line, the consensus is that almost all of the victims are daughters and sisters. That is probably true. But it raises additional questions. Do these families care about no kind of honour except sexual honour? Actually, they care just as intensely about another kind of honour: the courage of men in battle (which remains common in many parts of the world). What happens to sons and or brothers who show signs of cowardice or weakness of any kind?

The other explanation of honour killings is ideological. It originates at least partly, often primarily, in the need of ideological feminists (as distinct from egalitarian ones) to score political points by denying the importance of cultural differences. Consider Aysan Sev’er, a sociologist at the University of Toronto. During a televised interview with Mutsumi Takahashi, she argued that the underlying cause of honour killings is not Islam but misogyny. And misogyny prevails not only in Islamic countries. She implied, therefore, that Canada is really not much better for women than Afghanistan is. By women, she was not referring only to female immigrants from Islamic countries, whose families have not adjusted to the fact that their daughters want the freedoms that Canadian society promotes. She was referring also to women of the Canadian host society as well. “In almost every society, including our own,” said Sev’er, “there is violence against women.” That, she added, is because these killings represent merely an extreme position “on a continuum” of “violence against women” in all societies. The only difference between Canada and Afghanistan, according to her, is that patriarchy is relative here and absolute there (albeit in “pockets”). Chew and Hussain, who rely ultimately on the same explanation, quote Alia Hogben of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women. “Violence against women is endemic,” says Hogben, “in societies where men wield control over women’s lives.” Of course, she believes that men do so in all societies. And according to Adeema Niazi of the Toronto-based Afghan Women’s Organization, “Violence against women exists everywhere.” It does indeed. But so does violence against men. This, too, raises a question.

Why insist on action to eliminate only “violence against women” (sometimes “and children”), not violence of all kinds? Why, in other words, ignore violence against men? One implication of the refusal even to mention violence against men is the belief that it is either trivial (even though statistics do not support that belief) or innately male (even though that involves blaming the victims). If so, it requires no comment, no research, and no government action (aside from locking up offenders). This is the naïve implication.

Another implication is much more sophisticated but also much more sinister: the belief that violence against women is the primal and universal crime. Unlike women, from this point of view, men have some profound desire to subjugate women though also, in a derived sense, other men. From this, it supposedly follows that violence against women underlies all forms of violence and all forms of oppression; even men who do not commit acts of violence against women presumably benefit from the acts of other men and therefore participate in their guilt.

This brings us to the heart of this ideological explanation for honour killings: the notion of “collective guilt,” according to which some people are evil by virtue of their genetic identity. But blaming all men is surely no better than blaming all women, all Muslims, all immigrants, and so on. Both sexism and racism are forms of prejudice. Both, in fact, rely on genetically defined enemies.

McGill religious studies professors Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young are co-authors of Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture.

Ottawa Citizen

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You shouldn't blame all Muslims for honour killings ­ but you shouldn't blame all men, either

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